Improving Business Processes Through Mobile Apps

An Analysis Framework to Identify Value-added App Usage Scenarios

Eva Hoos

, Christoph Gröger

, Stefan Kramer

and Bernhard Mitschang

Institute of Parallel and Distributed System, University of Stuttgart, Universitätsstraße 38, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany

Daimler AG, Hanns-Klemm-Str. 5, 71034 Böblingen, Germany

Keywords: Business Processes, Analysis Framework, Mobile Application.

Abstract: Mobile apps offer new possibilities to improve business processes. However, the introduction of mobile

apps is typically carried out from a technology point of view. Hence, process improvement from a business

point of view is not guaranteed. There is a methodological lack for a holistic analysis of business processes

regarding mobile technology. For this purpose, we present an analysis framework, which comprises a sys-

tematic methodology to identify value-added usage scenarios of mobile technology in business processes

with a special focus on mobile apps. The framework is based on multi-criteria analysis and portfolio analy-

sis techniques and it is evaluated in a case-oriented investigation in the automotive industry.

1 INTRODUCTION

With the rise of smartphones and tablets, a new type

of software called mobile apps has established itself

in consumers’ life. Mobile apps provide an easy-to-

use, touchscreen-based handling and can be used

anytime and anywhere (Clevenger, 2011). The em-

ployment of mobile apps in enterprises creates new

possibilities for business process improvement, e. g.,

by the elimination of activities for paper-based data

collection. Hence, enterprises are more and more

equipping employees with a variety of mobile devic-

es to enhance productivity (Unhelkar and

Murugesan, 2010). To this end, the enterprise has to

decide which type of IT technology fits best for each

process activity. As illustrated in Figure 1 three

types of IT technology can be distinguished in gen-

eral:

 PCs as stationary IT systems

 Laptops as mobile IT systems

 Smartphones and tablets as mobile touchscreen-

based devices

In general, the usage of these types may differ for

each activity in a process. The corresponding deci-

sion making process is complex, because there are

many issues and requirements R

to consider, espe-

cially the following:

Potential of mobile technology (R1): A central

question is whether there is a business benefit of

using mobile technology. Generally, mobile tech-

Figure 1: Which IT technology fits best for executing this

activity?

nology can have two different effects on business

processes (Gumpp and Pousttchi, 2005):

 Supporting mobility given by the process

 Enabling novel mobility in processes where none

existed before

However, not every employment of mobile technol-

ogy leads to an improvement of the business pro-

cesses in terms of efficiency and effectiveness.

Hence, activities that profit from one of the two

effects have to be identified systematically.

Type of Mobile Devices (R2): There are a lot of dif-

ferent devices for mobile technology such as lap-

tops, smartphones, tablets, PDAs, and mobile

phones differing in hardware and software character-

istics. In this work, we are considering the following

PC Laptop

Smartphone&

Tablet

Best

option

?

Hoos E., Gröger C., Kramer S. and Mitschang B..

Improving Business Processes Through Mobile Apps - An Analysis Framework to Identify Value-added App Usage Scenarios.

DOI: 10.5220/0004897100710082

In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS-2014), pages 71-82

ISBN: 978-989-758-028-4

 2014 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

types of mobile devices:

 Mobile PC like laptops

 Mobile touch-based devices like smartphones

In contrast to mobile PCs, mobile touch-based de-

vices have special features e. g., sensors like GPS

and camera, touch-based user interface, mobile ra-

dio, and a purpose-build operating system. There-

fore, mobile devices target different application

scenarios.

Holistic Point of View (R3): The combination of

business-oriented and technology-oriented aspects

avoids a purely technology-driven introduction of

mobile technology. The latter typically focuses on

porting existing back-end applications on mobile

apps without a detailed business analysis. Besides,

business aspects do not only refer to the mobility of

process activities but further contextual factors like

the elimination of manual data acquisition. In addi-

tion, not only aspects of the process activity but also

infrastructural and organizational issues of the en-

terprise, e.g., the existence of a mobile network,

have to be considered.

In the following, examples are given to illustrate

the complexity of these issues in the decision mak-

ing process.

Motivating Examples. With respect to the business

potential (R1), the question “is it suggestive to mobi-

lize an existing enterprise application?” cannot be

answered in general. Mobilization of an application

means, that the application can be accessed using

mobile devices. For example, enterprise resource

planning data can be accessed by different IT sys-

tems in order to check actual stock levels. However,

not in every scenario a mobile application is suffi-

cient. We illustrate this point in three exemplary

scenarios: In the first scenario, a sales man needs

information about current stock levels on-site at the

customer. In this case, mobile technology is benefi-

cial because he can access the data during his cus-

tomer visit. In another scenario, if an office worker

needs this information, a benefit of mobilization is

questionable because stationary IT technology may

be sufficient. In the last scenario, a manager has to

verify the ordering of parts. He can do this at his

stationary workspace using a PC as the activity itself

does not involve mobile aspects. Yet, he is regularly

on business trips and thus process execution is de-

layed until he returns and verifies open orderings.

For this purpose it would be beneficial to verify

orders on-the-go when being out of office using

mobile technology.

A further challenge is to choose between the dif-

ferent types of mobile technology (R2) in the above

scenarios. For example, the worker has to input data

including a description of the situation. The structure

of data input as well as the required computing pow-

er have to be analysed in order to select a suitable

mobile technology. For instance, if computing ca-

pacity is critical, a notebook is more appropriate

than a mobile touch-based device. Moreover, organ-

izational aspects, e. g., compliance regulations, have

to be considered in a holistic view (R3).

Contribution and Paper Outline. In this paper, we

present a holistic analysis framework for the goal-

oriented use of mobile technology in business pro-

cesses to identify value-added usage scenarios of

mobile technology with a special focus on mobile

apps. The framework comprises a systematic meth-

odology using multi-criteria analysis and portfolio

analysis techniques and considers all above require-

ments (R1-R3).

The remainder of this paper is structured as fol-

lows: Section 2 gives an overview of the framework

including the analysis methodology and the underly-

ing analysis artifacts. Section 3 details on the analy-

sis artifacts and the analysis methodology is de-

scribed in Section 4. A proof of concept of the

framework is presented in Section 5 based on a case-

oriented application in the automotive industry.

Related work and a comparative evaluation are dis-

cussed in Section 6. Finally, Section 7 concludes the

paper and highlights future work.

2 ANALYSIS FRAMEWORK

In this section, we first give an overview about the

analysis framework. After that, we discuss the po-

tential improvements of business processes accord-

ing to the goal dimensions cost, time, flexibility and

quality when using mobile apps.

2.1 Overview

The purpose of our framework is to systematically

analyze process activities with respect to their im-

provement potential using mobile technology in

order to support enterprises in the decision which IT

technology fits best. Improvements refer to en-

hancements of both the efficiency of a process, e. g.,

by a faster execution, and the effectiveness, e. g., by

elimination of paper-based data collection to im-

prove data quality. The major result is a portfolio of

analyzed activities which are categorized according

to the IT technology which fits best. This provides

the basis to deduce value-added usage scenarios and

to define corresponding development projects and IT

investments.

ICEIS2014-16thInternationalConferenceonEnterpriseInformationSystems

Figure 2: Analysis Framework to improve Business Processes using mobile apps.

The framework is made up of two major parts, the

analysis methodology and the analysis artifacts (see

Figure 2). The analysis methodology describes the

execution sequence of analysis activities which

require and create different analysis artifacts as input

and output. Thereby, we distinguish between three

groups of analysis artifacts, namely

 the criteria catalogue and criteria values,

 the app potential as a metric and

 the app management portfolio.

The criteria catalogue reflects the different aspects

for the usage of mobile technology in enterprises.

The app potential is a metric to operationalize the

improvement potential of each activity with respect

to mobile apps. This means, the higher the app po-

tential the more the activity can be improved using

mobile apps. The app management portfolio enables

the classification and ranking of the activities ac-

cording to the IT technology which fits best.

The analysis methodology comprises two starting

points and three activities, namely:

 Process Analysis

 Evaluation of App Potential

 Recommendation Generation

The starting points represent different application

variants of the framework. The user point of view

enables employees to validate improvement sugges-

tions for selected activities across different process-

es. The process point of view considers improve-

ments of an entire process including all activities.

Process analysis refers to a procedure to deter-

mine the value of each criterion in the criteria cata-

log. The input is the criteria catalogue and the output

comprises a criteria value for each analyzed criteri-

on. These values represent in turn the input for the

evaluation of the app potential. The latter defines a

procedure to calculate the app potential as a metric.

At last, recommendation generation reveals the app

management portfolio according to the app potential

of each activity. On this basis, recommendations are

deduced according to the IT technology which fits

best for each activity in the portfolio.

2.2 Goal Dimensions of Process

Improvement

The goal of our framework is to improve business

processes regarding efficiency and effectiveness.

These improvements can be evaluated with respect

to four goal dimensions, namely time, cost, quality

and flexibility (Reijers and Mansar, 2005). In the

following, the potential improvements of business

processes through the usage of mobile technology

are discussed according to these goal dimensions.

Time. The execution time of the process can be

reduced due to the anywhere and anytime character-

istics of mobile touch-based devices. For instance,

the delay between two activities can be minimized,

because the actor of the activity can receive and

perform the task immediately and independently

from his location, that is, the actor has not to go back

to his stationary work place to perform the task.

Furthermore, activities may be entirely eliminated,

for example, when they solely focus on paper-based

data acquisition.

Quality. Mobile touch-based devices can increase

the quality of the activity, e. g., by avoiding media

breaks and corresponding transmission errors. Fur-

thermore, due to new sensor technologies, the quali-

ty of the data increases. For instance, taking a pic-

ture is more meaningful as describing a situation

textually or recording the location via GPS is more

precise than a textual location description. In addi-

tion, through the easy-to-use and intuitive touch-

screen handling, the usability of the application is

increased and can avoid input errors.

Flexibility. Flexibility can be increased by the use of

mobile touch-based devices, because the actor can

perform the task anytime and independent from his

location. For example, with mobile apps the em-

ployee can answer his email not only on his station-

ary work place but also in a train or at the airport.

ProcessAnalysis

AppPotential

Evaluation

Recommendation

Generation

CriteriaValues AppPotential

AppManagement

Portfolio

Analysis

Methodology

Analysis

Artifacts

Process

User

CriteriaCatalogue

ImprovingBusinessProcessesThroughMobileApps-AnAnalysisFrameworktoIdentifyValue-addedAppUsage

Scenarios

Cost. The impact on costs has two sides: On the one

hand, the usage of mobile apps increases costs by

purchasing mobile touch-based devices and estab-

lishing a corresponding IT infrastructure. On the

other hand, purchasing costs may amortize over the

time due to shorter execution times, higher quality or

increased flexibility as explained above.

To sum up, mobile apps provide significant po-

tentials for the improvements of business processes

regarding time, quality, flexibility and cost. Our

framework aims at leveraging these potentials by a

holistic analysis of business processes. It has to be

remarked, that a profound analysis of the cost di-

mension requires additional investment calculations

regarding the use of information systems in organi-

zations (Ward and Peppard, 2002). Hence, our

framework focuses on the dimensions time, quality

and flexibility and can be extended by cost analysis

concepts.

3 ANALYSIS ARTIFACTS

This section describes the analysis artifacts of the

framework, namely the criteria catalogue, the app

potential, and the app management portfolio.

3.1 Criteria Catalogue

The criteria catalogue is based on multi-criteria

analysis techniques. With these techniques, complex

decision problems with multiple options and re-

strictions can be structured (Cansando et al., 2012).

As a basis for the criteria definition, we conducted

literature analyses (Forman and Zahorjan, 1994;

Gruhn and Köhler; Gumpp and Pousttchi, 2005;

Krogstie, 2001; Murugesan and Venkatakrishnan,

2005; Nah et al., 2005; Sarker and Wells, 2003;

Scherz, 2008; Wasserman, 2010). Moreover, we

carried out expert interviews with employees of a

German car manufacturer to refine the identified

criteria.

The criteria catalogue reflects the different as-

pects of mobile app usage in enterprises including

the requirements R1, R2, and R3. The criteria are

grouped into four categories: mobility, process,

technology requirement, and corporate conditions.

Each criterion has predefined ordinal values follow-

ing a qualitative approach. In addition, some criteria

are complemented by indicators to ease the determi-

nation of their value.

Table 1 shows the structure of

the criteria catalogue. In the following, an overview

of the different categories and the corresponding

criteria is given.

Mobility of the Activity. This category includes

two criteria: task and actor. These criteria consider

the aspects given in R1. The criterion task is based

on the definition of mobile processes given in

(Gruhn et al., 2007) and has the predefined values of

high, medium and low.

Table 1: Criteria Catalogue.

Mobilityoftheactivity

Actor:Mobilityoftheactor

Task:Mobilityofthetask

Process

Relevance

Frequency:Numberofexecution

Acuteness:Importanceofperformingthetask

immediately

CurrentInformationSystem

Digitalization:Potentialofdigitalization

Devices:Possibilitiestoreplaceotherdeviceswith

mobiletouch‐baseddevices

Usability:Improvementsofusabilitythrough

mobiletouch‐baseddevices

Sensors:Enrichmentoftheapplicationthrough

theuseofsensors

TechnologyRequirements

Performance

DataVolumeTransmit:Amountofdatawhich

havetobetransmitted

DateVolumeReceive:Amountofdatawhichhave

tobereceived

ComputingPower:Amountofcomputingpower

theapplicationrequires

Presentation:Datarepresentationonasmall

screen

TypeofInput:Structureofdatainput

SoftwareQuality

Availability:Availabilityrequirementsoftheappli‐

cation

Security:Securityrequirementsoftheapplication

CorporateConditions

Individual

User:Acceptanceoftheuser

Management:Supportofmanagementtointro‐

ducemobileapps

Organizational

MobileDevices:Existenceofmobiletouch‐based

devices

Guidelines:Guidelineslimitingtheusageofmobile

touch‐baseddevices

Infrastructural

DataCommunication:Availabilityofmobilenet‐

works

The indicators are a station ary workplace, the

ICEIS2014-16thInternationalConferenceonEnterpriseInformationSystems

uncertainty of the execution space, moving actor or

multiple execution places. The uncertainty of the

execution space emerges if the execution space is

unknown at the start of the process or it differs in

multiple instances of the process. For example, the

value of the criterion task is high, if there is a high

uncertainty of the execution space, a moving actor or

multiple execution spaces. The value is low if the

task is executed on a stationary workspace. This

criterion investigates whether mobile technology can

be employed to support existing mobility in the

process. In contrast, the criterion actor considers if

there is a benefit by enabling the location independ-

ent execution of a stationary activity. Therefore, the

cross-process mobility of the actor is investigated on

the basis of the definition of mobile workers given in

(Gumpp and Pousttchi, 2005). The predefined values

of the criterion actor are high, medium and low. The

indicators are stationary workspace, mobile work-

force, and frequent business trips. For example, the

value is high if the actor is part of a mobile work-

force, rarely on his stationary workspace or often on

business trips.

Process. The category process considers aspects

given by the process itself. This comprises, on the

one hand, the effects of the improvement of the

activity on the entire process and, on the other hand,

the improvement potential of the underlying infor-

mation system. Therefore, the category is divided

into two subcategories: relevance and current infor-

mation system. The category relevance contains the

criteria frequency and acuteness. Based on these

criteria, the impact on the process by improving the

respective activity is analyzed. The criterion fre-

quency refers to the frequency of execution of an

activity. Thereby, it is not differentiated if the activi-

ty is executed multiple times in one process instance

or if multiple process instance lead to frequent activ-

ity executions as the potential impact of the activity

is higher the more often it is executed in general.

The predefined values are often, regularly, and rare-

ly. There are no concrete numbers as these depend

on industry-specific process conditions. The subcat-

egory current information system considers the im-

provement potential regarding the current infor-

mation system. The criteria are digitalization, exist-

ence of devices, usability and sensors. For instance,

the criterion

sensors investigates if the use of sen-

sors has the potential to improve the activity, e.g., by

taking photo of a situation instead of describing it

textually.

Technology Requirements. The category technolo-

gy requirements analyzes technological aspects of

the application used in the activity. They are de-

duced from (Forman and Zahorjan, 1994; Krogstie,

2001; Murugesan and Venkatakrishnan, 2005; Was-

serman, 2010). The category is divided into perfor-

mance aspects and software quality aspects. The

performance subcategory contains the following

criteria: Data Volume of send and receive, compu-

ting power, presentation and type of input. With

these criteria, the required performance can be

matched with the different types of mobile technolo-

gy. For instance, the criterion presentation refers to

the characteristics of small screens. It is investigated

if it is possible to present the data on small screens.

Indicators are type of the data, e. g., text or picture,

and number of data sets. The subcategory software

quality refers to non-functional properties and con-

tains the criteria availability and security. Security is

one of the biggest barriers to introduce mobile tech-

nology in enterprises (Gröger et al., 2013). In this

paper, security refers to data security which can be

divided into confidentiality, integrity, authenticity,

non-repudiation. The predefined values are high,

medium and low. For the determination, the risks of

violating each aspect have to be considered.

Corporate Conditions. The category corporate

conditions combines general organizational and

technological conditions for the use of mobile tech-

nology in the enterprise. Thereby, aspects of mobile

readiness as well as the context of the usage have to

be considered (Basole, 2005). Thus, the subcatego-

ries are individual, organizational and infrastructur-

al. Individual considers the user and the manage-

ment and their readiness to use and accept mobile

apps in the enterprise. For instance, the criterion

user estimates if the users have a general affinity for

mobile devices. Indicators are technical interests of

the user and whether he already uses mobile touch-

based devices. The predefined values are high, me-

dium

and low. If the value high is true, then the pos-

sibility that the user would use the devices is high.

The subcategory organizational refers to organiza-

tional aspects of the enterprises and includes the

criteria mobile devices and guidelines. The criterion

mobile devices investigates if the actor already em-

ploys mobile devices that he can reuse for other

applications. Guidelines may prescribe, for instance,

that in some restricted company areas mobile device

are not allowed. Infrastructural contains one criteri-

on, data communication. It represents the availabil-

ity of mobile networks.

3.2 App Potential

The app potential is a metric representing the poten-

tial of improvement for a process activity when

ImprovingBusinessProcessesThroughMobileApps-AnAnalysisFrameworktoIdentifyValue-addedAppUsage

Scenarios

supported by mobile apps. The app potential has two

dimensions, mobilization potential and app capabil-

ity.

The mobilization potential refers to the aspect

whether a mobile execution of the activity is benefi-

cial. The higher the mobilization potential is, the

higher the advantages of using mobile technology in

general. The app capability refers to the question,

whether the application supporting the activity is

suited to be realized as an app on mobile touch-

based devices.

In order to determine the app potential, the crite-

ria of the catalogue are mapped to the two dimen-

sions of the app potential. The numerical calculation

is then based on scored and weighted criteria values

as explained in Section 4.3.

The app potential metric enables the ranking and

prioritization of process activities in a portfolio (see

Section 3.3) and makes them comparable regarding

their improvement potential using mobile apps.

3.3 App Management Portfolio

The app management portfolio is based on portfolio

analysis concepts. The latter are typically used for

evaluating, selecting and managing re-

search&development projects in order to make stra-

tegic choices (Bohanec et al., 1995; Mikkola, 2001;

Killen et al., 2008). We adapted these concepts to

the evaluation and selection of process activities

regarding mobile technology. The app management

portfolio groups the process activities into four cate-

gories according to their mobilization potential and

their app capability. The goal is to define action

recommendations for each category. These recom-

mendations focus on the type of IT technology

which fits best for each category. The four catego-

ries are flexible & easy-on-the-go, complex & mo-

bile, legacy & fixed, and fancy & pointless. The

resulting portfolio is shown in Figure 3. The higher

the app potential of an activity, the more it is posi-

tioned further up on the right of the portfolio.

Activities in the flexible & easy-on-the-go cate-

gory have a high mobilization potential and a high

app capability. That is, process improvements are

high when using apps for this activity. It is highly

recommended to deduce a corresponding usage

scenario for a mobile app. For instance, if a mobile

worker needs actual information of an enterprise

backend system or has to record information on-the-

go, these activities may be in the flexible & easy-on-

the-go category. A corresponding app could not only

provide mobile access but easily enrich the infor-

mation by sensor data, e.g., photos, location, voice

or video as provided by the most smartphones. The

recorded information can be transmitted directly to

the backend instead of describing the situation textu-

ally on a paper and transferring it manually.

Figure 3: App Management Portfolio.

The complex & mobile category is characterized

by a high mobilization potential and a low app capa-

bility. That is, activities in that category can be im-

proved, if their applications run on mobile devices.

However, the application is not suitable for running

on mobile touch-based devices due to, e. g., high

performance requirements of the application. Hence,

the actors of these activities should be equipped with

laptops being able to connect to the enterprise IT

backend. For example, if a simulation model should

be compared to the real world, the employee has to

go to this area with his mobile device. Simulation

needs a lot of computing power, hence a notebook

might be suited. Writing a long report at the point of

action is another example for a notebook application

because writing a text on touchscreens is not appro-

priate.

Low mobilization potential and low app capabili-

ties are the characteristics of activities positioned in

the legacy & fixed quadrant. This implies that there

are no improvements when using mobile technology.

Thus, there is a clear suggestion to refer to tradition-

al stationary technology like PCs.

The fancy & pointless category has low mobili-

zation potential and high app capabilities. That is, it

is possible to create an app for this application but

the app does not add value, because the execution of

the activity is not improved. For instance, an engi-

neer might use an app for mobile product data man-

agement without having mobile tasks. Technology-

driven approaches are in danger of producing apps

for this type of process activities. Activities in this

category should be supported by stationary IT tech-

nology although it is technologically possible to

AppCapability

MobilizationPotential

flexible&

easy‐on‐the‐go

complex&

mobile

fancy&

pointless

legacy&

fixed

ICEIS2014-16thInternationalConferenceonEnterpriseInformationSystems

employ apps.

The boundaries of the quadrants can be varied

according to the enterprise strategy. By default,

boundaries are based on half of the maximum values

for mobilization potential and app capability reveal-

ing quadrats of equal size. The numerical calculation

of these values is described in Section 4.3 and the

categorization of activities in the portfolio is detailed

in Section 4.4.

4 ANALYSIS METHODOLOGY

This section explains the activities of the analysis

methodology including its application variants.

4.1 Application Variants

The methodology has two possible starting points,

which enable two different applications variants,

namely the process-driven and the user-driven vari-

ant. In the process-driven variant, the analysis is

initiated by the person who is responsible for the

process, the process owner. The goal is to improve

the whole process. Hence, all activities of the select-

ed process are analyzed and as a result positioned in

the portfolio. The user-driven approach considers

the fact that through the consumerization of IT and

the bring-your-own-device paradigm more and more

workers have their own ideas of improving their

work using mobile apps (Clevenger, 2011). Thus, in

the user-driven variant, the analysis is initiated by

the worker in order to improve process activities

which he takes part in. Thereby, only the activities

selected by the worker are analyzed. In this way,

workers can justify or validate whether their ideas

for mobile apps are valuable from a business point

of view. The user-driven variant incorporates end

users and their creativity in the decision process but

further synergies across an entire process may not be

identified. Hence, the results of the two variants

should be combined when applying the framework.

4.2 Process Analysis

The process analysis refers to the application of the

criteria catalogue and the determination of the crite-

ria values for a given process activity. It comprises

four analysis activities, one for each category of

criteria. The entire procedure for process analysis is

shown Figure 4.

The input for the activity analysis of mobility de-

pends on the application variants. In the user-driven

approach, the input is one activity whereas in the

process-driven approach the input is the entire pro-

cess. Then, each activity is analyzed by determining

the values of the criteria from the category mobility

of activity. To minimize the effort, there is a condi-

tion for early termination after the analysis of mobil-

ity: If no mobility is detected, then the analysis of

the activity is terminated because mobility is the

prerequisite for the use of mobile devices. No mobil-

ity is given, if the values of the criteria actor and

task are both low.

Figure 4: Procedure and activities for process analysis.

After this step, the activities for the analysis of

process aspects, the analysis of technology require-

ments and the analysis of the cooperate conditions

follow. Thereby, these activities are executed in

parallel. The advantages of dividing the process

analysis into four subanalyses are that the entire

procedure is clearly structured and the results can be

reused. For example, if two activities are executed in

the same environment, the corporate conditions have

to be analyzed only once and the results are used for

both activities.

4.3 Evaluation of App Potential

In order to evaluate the app potential, the criteria and

their values have to be mapped to the dimensions of

the app potential

as explained in Section 3.2. For this

purpose, the influence of the criteria on the dimen-

sions has to be examined. For example, the criterion

task in the category mobility of the activity has an

influence on the mobilization potential due to the

fact that a mobile task would benefit from mobiliza-

tion. Hence, the criterion task is assigned to the

dimension mobilization potential (



. In con-

trast, the criterion computing power is assigned to

the dimension app capability (



, because this

differentiates laptops from mobile touch-based de-

vices.

The next step is to specify the concrete influence

of a criterion value on the dimension it belongs to.

Therefore, a scoring function 









maps the

ordinal value k

of a criterion C to a numerical value.

The scoring function is based on a scoring matrix as

shown in Table 2. For example, if the criterion actor

AnalysisofMobility

Analysisof

Technology

Requirements

AnalysisofProcess

Aspects

Mobility

available?

Yes

Endof

Analysis/

Start of

Evaluation

Analysisof

Corporate

Conditions

Yes

Start of

Analysis

End

Yes

ImprovingBusinessProcessesThroughMobileApps-AnAnalysisFrameworktoIdentifyValue-addedAppUsage

Scenarios

has the value high, then 



  



3 and

in case the value is low it is 



  



1.

Table 2: Extract of the scoring matrix.

Score

3 2 1

Task High Medium Low

Actor High Medium Low

Frequency

…

Often

….

Regularly Rarely

In addition, the influence of individual criteria on

the app potential can be adapted by weighting each

scored criterion C with weight w

as in











∗



. The weighting enables enterprises

to adapt the impact of the criteria according to their

mobile strategy. For example, if data security issues

are very important, such as with product data for

manufacturing cars, the weight 



can be

increased.

On this basis, the numerical values for the app

potential of a process activity are calculated as fol-

lows:

  



,











  









∗



∈





 ∈ ,

4.4 Recommendation Generation

The step recommendation generation positions the

activities in the app management portfolio and de-

fines action recommendations for each portfolio

category (see Section 3.3). Process activities are

positioned according to their values for app capabil-

ity and mobilization potential. For example, activi-

ties with the app potential (0,0) belong to the catego-

ry legacy & fixed. The higher the app potential of an

activity, the more it is positioned further up on the

right of the portfolio.

Using this portfolio, the stakeholders can decide

which activities should be supported by apps and

prioritize corresponding development projects.

Hence, the enterprise gets a structured overview

about the app potential across various processes.

5 CASE-ORIENTED PROOF OF

CONCEPT

As an initial proof of concept, we applied our

framework in a real case at a large German car man-

ufacturer. At this, we used the framework to analyse

a concrete process in the engineering domain. In the

following, we describe the process and the analysis.

At the end, we discuss the results.

5.1 Modification Approval Process

The modification approval process is part of the car

development process. During the development of a

car, a lot of change requests arise. For instance, the

design of the seat is changed or another breaking

system should be used. However, single changes

have impacts on the whole car. For instance, it has to

be checked whether the new seat design fits the car’s

interior. The modification approval ensures that the

product data in the product data management (PDM)

system is in a consistent state despite modifications.

In general, a faster execution of the process is desir-

able to reduce development times.

For our analysis, a process description is needed.

Therefore, we conducted interviews with the organi-

zational owners of the process to get a high level

overview about the process and deduce a simple

process model. This deduced process model is

shown in Figure 5. It consists of six sequential activ-

ities. The process starts if product data is modified.

Product data comprises both product descriptions in

terms of computer-aided-design models and the

product structure in form of a bill of materials. When

the modification is done, the engineer has to create a

modification document including all relevant chang-

es. Once the document is checked into the PDM

system, the process starts. Then, the system forwards

the document to various persons with different re-

sponsibilities following a pre-determined order. At

first, the responsible person for this component, the

creator himself or his boss, has to perform the check

modification record activity. This includes checking

the document for correctness and completeness.

After that, the activity verify packaging is performed

by the packaging manager. A package is a higher

level component build of multiple parts. For exam-

ple, the worker checks if there is an installation

space collision, e.g., whether the new engine fits in

the bonnet. After that, the design validator performs

the activity verify design to ensure data quality.

Then, the activity verify and approve modification

has to be executed by the technically responsible

persons. First, the team lead has to give his approval

and then the department leader approves as well. If

the document received all required approvals, the

documentarian performs the activity create entries in

PDM. With that, the modification is completely

documented in the PDM and the modification appro-

ICEIS2014-16thInternationalConferenceonEnterpriseInformationSystems

Figure 5: Process model of the modification approval process.

val process finishes.

This simple modelling is sufficient for our analy-

sis, because all other important aspects for mobile IT

support, e.g., location and roles, are covered in the

criteria catalogue. Yet, for further stages like the

development of suitable apps for the process, the

process model has to be extended by other process

characteristics such as location, actors, business

domains and resources (Gao and Krogstie, 2012;

Gopalakrishnan et al., 2012).

5.2 Framework Application and

Results

On the basis of the process model described above,

we applied our framework according to the analysis

methodology shown in Figure 2. We used the pro-

cess-driven approach in order to analyse the entire

process. For the first step, we conducted interviews

with process experts to determine the criteria values.

On this basis, we investigated the mobility of

each activity according to the procedure described in

Figure 4. Therefore, the criteria task and actor are

used. We observed that all tasks have a low mobility.

The reason is that they are all executed at the actor’s

stationary workspace. However, during the evalua-

tion of the criterion actor, two groups of activities

were identified. One group has actors with a low

mobility and the other one has actors with a high

mobility. The activities create modification record

document, check document, verify packaging, verify

design, and create entries in PDM have actors with a

low mobility because they are most of their working

time at their stationary workspaces. In contrast, the

activities check record and verify and approve modi-

fication have actors who are rarely at their work

spaces. Thus, according to the termination condition,

we further analysed only the activities from group

two, check record and verify and approve modifica-

tion, and skip process analysis for group one.

Our analysis results of these activities reveal that

that the values of the (sub)categories process, per-

formance requirement, and individual had a positive

influence on the app potential of these activities,

because the process is very important, so enhance-

ment is beneficial for the enterprise and the perfor-

mance requirements make it possible to run the

application on mobile touch-based devices. In addi-

tion, workers and management welcome the usage

of mobile touch-based devices. However, the big

challenge are security requirements. Product data are

highly sensitive and no unauthorized person should

be able to read them.

After performing the app potential evaluation

(see Figure 6), two activities were positioned in the

category flexible & easy-on-the-go, namely check

record and verify and approve modification. For

these activities, an app usage scenario was defined

as a basis for the development of a concrete app

within the car manufacturer. The other activities

create entries in PDM, check package, check design,

and create modification cannot be improved through

mobile technology due to a low mobilization poten-

tial.

5.3 Discussion

We discussed both the procedure of applying our

framework as well as the concrete results for the

modification approval process with experts on mo-

bile technology within the industry partner.

It became clear that the strict structure and the

systematic procedure to apply the framework make

the results comprehensible and transparent. Moreo-

ver, it was emphasized that the portfolio visualiza-

tion enables an easy communication and representa-

tion of the analysis results especially for corporate

management. Before, various ideas for new mobile

apps were discussed within the industry partner

without clear prioritization. The portfolio helped to

get an overview of all analyzed activities and corre-

sponding possibilities for new apps. This provided a

sound basis for decision making and prioritization of

investments in mobile technology. On the one hand,

potential users could be convinced that their app

ideas in the category fancy & pointless should not be

realized. On the other hand, IT responsibles devel-

oped a deeper understanding for a business-driven

view on mobile technology.

With respect to the analysis methodology, the

termination condition was recognized as helpful

because it decreased the analysis effort significantly.

The approval modification process comprised six

activities and the analysis of four was terminated

using the termination condition. Yet, with respect to

the criteria, additional indicators revealed to be help-

ful in order to precisely determine the value of each

criterion. At this, more fine-grained values for some

Create

Modification

Document

Verify

Package

Verify

Design

CreateEntriesin

PDM

Check

Modification

Record

Verifyand

Approve

Modification

ImprovingBusinessProcessesThroughMobileApps-AnAnalysisFrameworktoIdentifyValue-addedAppUsage

Scenarios

criteria like security and data volume would be help-

ful, too.

Figure 6: Portfolio of modification approval process.

Considering the usage of mobile apps in the

modification approval process, the need for support-

ing the activities check record and verify and ap-

prove modification through a mobile app was recog-

nized by the industry partner. It was stated that an

app has the potential to reduce execution times and

enhance flexibility of the process significantly.

6 RELATED WORK AND

COMPARATIVE EVALUATION

In this section, we discuss related work and present a

qualitative evaluation of our framework based on a

comparison with similar approaches.

6.1 Related Work

For the discussion of related work, we differentiate

three groups of work with respect to mobile technol-

ogy in business processes.

The first group comprises work on the general

potential and impact as well as the basic conditions

for the use of mobile technology in business pro-

cesses (Basole, 2004; Basole, 2005; Gebauer and

Shaw, 2004; Nah et al., 2005). These works discuss

different high level aspects of mobile technology in

enterprises such as benefits of mobilizing processes,

transformational impact of mobile technology and

mobile enterprise readiness. Yet, they do not address

issues of a methodology to systematically realize the

benefits of mobile technology. The second group

comprises concepts which are similar to our frame-

work. (Gumpp and Pousttchi, 2005) propose a

framework to evaluate mobile applications accord-

ing to their potential business benefits. The frame-

work is based on the theory of informational added

values and its application to mobile business. It

constitutes a high level approach and misses the

detailed analysis of processes to deduce concrete

usage scenarios. (Gruhn et al., 2007) present a

framework, called Mobile Process Landscaping, to

choose a suitable mobile application to enhance

business processes. The authors make use of typical

return on investment concepts to analyze mobility in

processes and evaluate different mobile applications.

Yet, they neither incorporate technological aspects,

e. g., the complexity of data input, nor do they focus

on the specific characteristics of mobile apps.

(Scherz, 2008) define criteria to identify mobile

potential in business processes during a condition-

analysis as part of a classical system analysis. These

criteria are divided into four categories, namely

actor, process classification, data and information

system as well as devices. Yet, mobile apps are not

addressed specifically.

The third group of work considers the usage of

mobile apps in enterprises (Lunani, 2011; Gröger et

al., 2013; Clevenger, 2011). They point out that apps

have a great potential to improve business process,

suggest general application areas for apps and dis-

cuss selected app-oriented aspects, e. g., technical

requirements for the IT back-end. Yet, they do not

focus on an analysis methodology to identify con-

crete usage scenarios.

6.2 Comparative Evaluation

We qualitatively evaluate our framework against the

most similar approaches, namely Mobile Process

Landscaping (MPL) (Gruhn et al., 2007) and Identi-

fication of Mobile Potential (IMP)-Analysis (Scherz,

2008) described in the last subsection. In addition to

the requirements (R1-R3), the following criteria are

examined as well:

 Analysis effort to execute the approach

 Addressed goals of the approach according to

goal dimensions

 Existence of a cost-benefit analysis in the ap-

proach

The results are represented in Table 3. The evalua-

tion against R1 shows that the MPL does not consid-

er the two effects of mobile technology, namely

enabling and supporting of mobility. This is the

case, because they define a mobile process through

the distribution of the task and do not regard the

mobility of the actor as an additional enabling factor.

Besides, the table shows that only our framework

Appcapability

Mobilizationpotential

CheckModification

Record(18,6)

VerifyandApprove

Modification(18,6)

CreateModificationDocument(0,0)

VerifyPackage(0,0)

VerifyDesign(0,0)

Createentries

inPDM

(0,0)

17 34

flexible&easy‐on‐the‐gocomplex&mobile

fancy&pointlesslegacy&fixed

ICEIS2014-16thInternationalConferenceonEnterpriseInformationSystems

considers different types of mobile devices and cor-

responding mobile apps according to R2. However,

this is an important requirement because, due to their

special characteristics, mobile touch-based devices

create new possibility to enhance business process as

discussed in Section 2.2. The criteria defined in the

IMP-analysis and in our framework consider busi-

ness and technology aspects according to R3. In

contrast, MPL focuses on criteria with business

aspects only. However, technical aspects are partial-

ly considered in the further investigation of the

method.

Table 3: Comparative analysis of the approaches Mobile

Process Landscaping MPL (Gruhn et al., 2007), Identifica-

tion of Mobile Potential (IMP)-Analysis (Scherz, 2008)

and the analysis framework present in this work.

The comparison of the approaches regarding the

addressed goal dimensions shows that the goal of

MPL is to reduce process cost. In contrast, our

framework and the IMP-analysis consider the goal

dimensions time, flexibility and quality whereas the

IMP-analysis additionally includes cost aspects.

Another difference between the approaches is the

analysis effort: our approach needs a small analysis

effort because it is limited to the design of a simple

process model and the determination of the criteria

values including termination conditions, whereas

MPL and the IMP-analysis are based on a complex

process model. The missing of the cost-benefit anal-

ysis is the main drawback of our approach in com-

parison with the other approaches. However, per-

forming a cost-benefit analysis is not the aim of our

framework, which is designed to be applicable in a

simple way and with a low analysis effort. Yet, it

provides the basis for a comprehensive cost-benefit

analysis. Finally, a limitation of all approaches is

that the person who performs the analysis needs a

deep understanding in business processes and the

potential of mobile technology in order to achieve

valid results. This is why we suppose an assisting

application, e.g., a mobile app, to ease the applica-

tion of our framework.

7 CONCLUSION AND FUTURE

WORK

In this work, we presented an analysis framework to

identify value-added usages for mobile apps in order

to improve business processes. The analysis frame-

work assists stakeholders to decide which IT tech-

nology fits best for given process activities. It com-

prises a systematic methodology to analyze business

processes from a user or a process point of view and

reveals a portfolio, which categorizes process activi-

ties according to their app potential. This enables a

systematic and transparent procedure to identify

value-added usage scenarios for mobile apps and to

prioritize IT investments in mobile technology.

Our framework can not only be used to identify

usage scenarios for one process. It can also be used

to get a general view on mobile potentials of several

processes in an enterprise in order to identify cross-

process synergies and prioritize company-wide in-

vestments.

There are three major parts for future work: First,

we plan to apply the framework in other process

domains to further refine the criteria. Second, in

order to facilitate the application of our framework,

we plan to implement it as a software tool to support

the determination of the criteria values and the crea-

tion of the app management portfolio. Third, we

want to extend our framework in order to apply it

not only a posteriori on existing business processes

but a priori during business modelling of a new

process, as well.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The authors would like to thank the German Re-

search Foundation (DFG) for financial support of

this project as part of the Graduate School of Excel-

lence advanced Manufacturing Engineering

(GSaME) at the University of Stuttgart.

REFERENCES

Basole, R. (2005), “Mobilizing the enterprise: A concep-

tual model of transformational value and enterprise

MPL

IMP‐

Analysis

Our

Framework

R1 ‐ + +

R2 ‐‐ +

R3 ‐ + +

analysiseffor

hi gh high low

goal

dimensions

cost all all,butcost

cost‐benefit

analysis

yes yes no

ImprovingBusinessProcessesThroughMobileApps-AnAnalysisFrameworktoIdentifyValue-addedAppUsage

Scenarios

readiness”, Proceedings of the 26th ASEM National

Conference.

Basole, R. C. (2004), “The value and impact of mobile

information and communication technologies”, Pro-

ceedings of the IFAC Symposium 2004, pp. 1–7.

Bohanec, M., Rajkovič, V., Semolić, B. and Pogačnik, A.

(1995), “Knowledge-based portfolio analysis for pro-

ject evaluation”, Information & Management, pp.

293–302.

Cansando, F., Vasconcelos, A. and Santos, G. (2012),

“Using Multi-criteria Analysis to Evaluate Enterprise

Architecture Scenarios”, Proceedings of 14th Interna-

tional Conference on Enterprise Information Systems

2012.

Clevenger, N. C. (2011), iPad in the Enterprise: Develop-

ing and Deploying Business Applications, Wiley.

Forman, G. and Zahorjan, J. (1994), “The challenges of

mobile computing”, Computer.

Gao, S. and Krogstie, J. (2012), “Capturing Process

Knowledge for Multi-Channel Information Systems: A

Case Study”, International Journal of Information

System Modeling and Design.

Gebauer, J. and Shaw, M. J. (2004), “Success factors and

impacts of mobile business applications: results from a

mobile e-procurement study”, International Journal of

Electronic Commerce.

Gopalakrishnan, S., Krogstie, J. and Sindre, G. (2012),

“Capturing Location in Process Models: Comparing

Small Adaptations of Mainstream Notation”, Interna-

tional Journal of Information System Modeling and

Design, pp. 24–45.

Gröger, C., Silcher, S., Westkämper, E. and Mitschang, B.

(2013), “Leveraging Apps in Manufacturing. A

Framework for App Technology in the Enterprise”,

Proceedings of CIRP, pp. 664–669.

Gruhn, V. and Köhler, A., “Analysing and enhancing

business processes and IT-systems for mobile work-

force automation: a framework approach”, Euro Amer-

ican Association on Telematics and Information Sys-

tems.

Gruhn, V., Köhler, A. and Klawes, R. (2007), “Modeling

and analysis of mobile business processes”, Journal of

Enterprise Information Management, pp. 657–676.

Gumpp, A. and Pousttchi, K. (2005), “The “Mobility-M”-

framework for Application of Mobile Technology in

Business Processes”, 35. GI-Jahrestagung - Informat-

ik.

Killen, C. P., Hunt, R. A. and Kleinschmidt, E. J. (2008),

“Project portfolio management for product innova-

tion”, International Journal of Quality & Reliability

Management, Vol. 25 No. 1, pp. 24–38.

Krogstie, J. (2001), “Requirement Engineering for Mobile

Information Systems”, Proceedings of the 7th interna-

tional workshop on requirements engineering: Foun-

dations for software quality.

Lunani, M. (2011), Enterprise Mobile Apps. White Paper.

Mikkola, J. H. (2001), “Portfolio management of R&D

projects: implications for innovation management”,

Technovation, pp. 423–435.

Murugesan, S. and Venkatakrishnan, B. (2005), “Address

ing the challenges of Web applications on mobile

handheld devices”, Mobile Business 2005.

Nah, F.F.-H., Siau, K. and Sheng, H. (2005), “The value

of mobile applications: a utility company study”,

Commun. ACM, Vol. 48 No. 2, pp. 85–90.

Reijers, H. A. and Mansar, S. L. (2005), “Best practices in

business process redesign: an overview and qualitative

evaluation of successful redesign heuristics”, Omega,

Vol. 33 No. 4, pp. 283–306.

Sarker, S. and Wells, J. D. (2003), “Understanding mobile

handheld device use and adoption”, Commun. ACM,

Vol. 46 No. 12, pp. 35–40.

Scherz, M. (2008), “Mobile Business. Schaffung eines

Bewusstseins für mobile Potenziale im

Geschäftsprozesskontext”, Dissertation, Technische

Universität Berlin, 2008.

Unhelkar, B. and Murugesan, S. (2010), “The Enterprise

Mobile Applications Development Framework”, IT

Professional, Vol. 12 No. 3, pp. 33–39.

Ward, J. and Peppard, J. (2002), Strategic planning for

information systems, 3rd ed, J. Wiley.

Wasserman, A. I. (2010), “Software engineering issues for

mobile application development”, Proceedings of the

FSE/SDP workshop on Future of software engineering

research, ACM, pp. 397–400.

ICEIS2014-16thInternationalConferenceonEnterpriseInformationSystems